Ideas and thoughts about Microsoft Identity, C# development, cabbages and kings and random flotsam on the incoming tide

Monday, March 19, 2007

SOAP : WSCF - Web Services Contract First

"Contract first" involves creating the WSDL first and then using that to generate the code. There aren't many tools to do this.

Essentially, this approach involves modelling the messages, data and interfaces at the start and then publishing them as a contract before coding the implementation begins. Typically, modelling of the data and messages is done using a XML Schema (i.e. XSD files) and the contract is formalised using the Web Services Description Language (WSDL files).

thinktecture offer their free tool to do this which is nicely integrated with Visual Studio (2003 and 2005) and also allows a command line interface.